Arnott, Sigrid. “Knitting Socks for the Revolution.” For the Love of Knitting: A Celebration of the Knitter’s Art. Ed. Kari Cornell. Stillwater: Voyageur P, 2004. 125–130.
The wider work from which this comes is a coffee-table book that showcases images of knitted projects, vintage advertisements, and luscious yarn. However, the mix of essays contained within belie the seeming shallowness of this work’s genre; Arnott’s is one of the most interesting of the lot, particularly for one who is interested in the politicizing of craft.
Arnott’s focus here is largely upon the disruptive effects of the work of knitting, painting it as a rebellious, revolutionary art that reclaims labor time and artisanship as a thing of inherent value, separate from capitalist views of practicality. She largely focuses upon sock knitting, as it is one of the finest examples of the anti-capitalist ethos at work in knitting.
And, interestingly enough, she does it through the discussion of simple socks. There is no question that socks are easily found and cheaply purchased at any department or discount store. What, then, Arnott asks, does it mean for someone to spend between four and twenty dollars for sock yarn and then spend twenty to fifty hours of time knitting the socks? Especially when one considers the relative speed with which socks wear out, one is forced to consider that in order to knit socks “[w]e have to ignore core beliefs of our consumer culture. Capitalism depends on us to remember that time is money, that assembly lines separating the producer from the end user maximize efficiency….Instead of overthrowing the system, knitting socks renders it irrelevant” (126). In this work, Arnott begins to create quite a viable case could be made that all knitting for daily use is a small act of protest and reclamation in Western cultures.
Auerbach, Lisa. “Knitting For a New Millennium.” KnitKnit 6 (2006): 16–19. Lisa Anne Auerbach. 1 November 2007. <http://www.lisaanneauerbach.com/press/index.html>
In this work, knitting activist Lisa Auerbach exhorts fellow knitters to create thoughtful, technically complex, ideologically rich pieces: “Stop making scarves; start making trouble….knitting is political” (17). Several of her own works (the style of which is discussed in more detail in an overview of her website that appears later in this bibliography), are shown as inspiration.
This piece also includes one of Auerbach’s rare patterns, the Body Count Mittens. The pattern is intended to be a reflective process for knitters, as well as an educational experience for those who see the mittens being created. Each mitten has the date on which it was started, the number of American soldiers that had been killed in Iraq at the time, and a small image of a gun positioned so they will be clearly viewable on the back of the hand when worn. Auerbach’s description makes it clear that the mittens serve as both memorial and demonstration:
These mittens memorialize the number of American soldiers killed in Iraqu at the time the mittens are made. Since the numbers escalate daily, each mitten has a different number and date. Seen together, the pair of mittens show a span of time and the increase in killed soldiers over that time. Each pair of mittens will be different and dates will vary. Some of us knit faster than others, and this too will be reflected in the finished pair, since the date on the mittens is the date each one was started. (18)
In one piece, the passage of time is marked, the uniqueness of the knitter is shown, and the speed of the loss of life is recorded. This project is inherently feminist, rhetorically rich, and ideologically informed on a number of levels, not least because of the way it enables others to take individual action that still operates in a collective fashion.
Bizzell, Patricia. “Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Difference Do The Make?” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30 (2000): 5–17.
Although this work may seem like an odd choice for a bibliography that is
focused on needlework, it is the work of Bizzell and feminists like her that allow this kind of work to be taken up. In this piece, Bizzell looks at issues brought up by the pursuit of feminist historiography in rhetoric, particularly those examined in an exchange in College English between Gale, Glenn, and Jarratt. Bizzell concludes that, in large part, the issue that those who find fault with feminist techniques have is that the personalized, politically motivated, and occasionally somewhat hypothetical work (such as some of Glenn’s work in Rhetoric Retold) that is thereby brought to the table is too invested with emotion to be “proper” research.
In the process of defending this kind of work, Bizzell explains the ways in which emotions can enrich traditional academic writing, creating a “‘hybrid’ form of academic discourse” (202) that allows researchers to look at previously unexamined or unexaminable rhetorical acts: “[I]n order to get at the activities of these new rhetors, researchers have had to adopt radically new methods as well, methods which violate some of the most cherished conventions of academic research, most particularly in bringing the person of the researcher, her body, her emotions, and dare one say, her soul, into the work” (204). It is this type of research that interests me in this piece, not to mention the rest of my work.
Carter, Sue. “Using the Needle as a Sword: Needlework as Epidectic Rhetoric in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.” Rhetorical Agendas: Political, Ethical, Spiritual. Ed. Patricia Bizzell. Mahwah: Laurence Erlbaum Associates: 2006. 325–334.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention here that the author is my advisor, mentor, and strongest reason for attending BGSU. That said, I’ll endeavor to discuss this work with no bias…largely because I think it’s brilliant anyway, regardless of the author’s identity.
In this piece, Carter looks at the banners and other display art of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) active in America in the early part of the twentieth century. As it was fraught with difficulty for women to take public roles as speakers and activists at this point in time, displays of craft on the stages from which women of the WCTU were to speak marked these stages as women’s space, helping the speakers to retain their proper feminine ethos while engaged in the “unladylike” occupation of public speaking. The display art also served to give otherwise constrained women a societally acceptable activist outlet, as well as to create community and increase the identification these women had with the goals and activities of the WCTU. In this way, needlework served to empower a group of women, helping give them the ability to speak both verbally and visually, serving both as statement and permission to make a statement.
This piece points out craft’s ability to craft a subversive political statement, as well as to construct and strengthen women’s community/women’s ability to speak. As such, it is vital to several categories of my discussion.
The Edges of Grace: Provocative, Uncommon Craft. Fuller Craft Museum. Brockton: Fuller Craft Museum, 2006.
The catalog of the Fuller Craft exhibit of the same name, this text combines a stunning variety of images of rhetorically charged, innovatively created crafts with a few insightful words from the museum’s director and the curator of the exhibit. In these statements, they bring up some important points, asking whether all craft needs to be “pretty” while looking at the innovation of the artists they exhibit. Additionally, curator Gail M. Brown provides some excellent reasoning provided for the ability of craft to make a statement:
The nature of craft—its invitation to the tactile experience for both maker and audience, its recurring, familiar domestic scale and its ties to the historic continuum of singular, hand made, functional objects in the decorative arts—imbues all of this work with a human presence. Whether they are vessels, quilts, figurines, books, tapestries, jewelry, furniture or sculpture, the forms and media all serve the expressive potential of compelling ideas. (5)
Although the exhibit is now over, this catalog serves as an excellent overview for those interested in the rise of the current wave of statement-making craft within the modern art world.
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Goggin, Maureen Daly. “An Essamplaire Essai on the Rhetoricity of Needlework Sampler-Making: A Contribution to Theorizing and Historicizing Rhetorical Praxis.” Rhetoric Review 21.4 (2002): 309–337.
In this piece, Goggin looks at the history of embroidered samplers, looking at the ways in which the practices of creating and uses of these works have changed throughout the years from a place for invention and practice into an exercise in copying and competence. Originally, these samplers were pieces of cloth that served as “sketch pads” on which needleworkers could create new designs and provide examples of previous artistry for potential clients. Eventually, however, copied text was given a central position, as was the name of the needleworker. The emphasis had shifted from creation into a personal demonstration of skill.
Goggin’s purpose in this is multifaceted. As she puts it, “In this essay, then, I break new ground by tracing the history of needlework sampler-making: first, to bring into relief the rhetorical force of diverse practices that create texts, whether verbal or otherwise crafted, and, second, to push at the boundaries of what counts as rhetorical practice and who counts in its production” (310). As such, this piece does an excellent job in clarifying the ways in which the historical situatedness of a text can give it various levels of rhetorical depth.
Goggin, Maureen Daly. “Visual Rhetoric in Pens of Steel and Inks of Silk: Challenging the Great Visual/Verbal Divide.” Defining Visual Rhetorics. Eds. Charles A Hill and Marguerite Helmers. Mahwah: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. 87–110.
Another strong piece by Goggin, this book chapter examines the rhetorical possibilities of needlecraft as a discursive practice, with its simultaneous use of glottographic and semasiographic symbol systems. She clarifies the fluency in this unique idiom and the skill sets required of anyone working in this genre, using this to prove the high levels of rhetorical sophistication inherent in the form. “Learning what semiotic resources are available (domain knowledge) and how to use them (procedural knowledge) is part and parcel of knowing how to read and write the textile” (91). It is vital reading in this area, partially because of its strength in supporting the need to consider craft as rhetoric.
Johnson, Wendy Dasler. “Cultural Rhetorics of Women’s Corsets.” Rhetoric Review 20.3/4 (2001): 203–33.
In this piece, Johnson examines the cultural contexts for both the use of corsetry and anticorset crusades. A number of the things that she finds are interesting to anyone who studies gender or the body, but the most interesting for the purposes of this piece are her thoughts that specifically focus on Foucaultian readings of the corset as a place where constriction/constricting discourse is forming new sources of power through subversion. Johnson looks at the myriad corsets or outer markers of confinement that we all wear, and considers the way in which these new sites could be used to write new possibilities for culture. In closing, Johnson proposes that “[w]e might take part not only in switching discourses and places [of power]—but in making them transformative rather than embrace again some one corset as the line of truth or beauty” (228).
The way in which Johnson brings Foucault to bear on material rhetoric is hugely important for my work. After all, there have long been discourses that limited the feminine sphere to traditionally gendered arts like needlecraft. That kind of limitation, however, created new opportunities for women to express themselves through subversive, unplanned uses of needlework that spoke to limited audiences through coding or to larger audiences in clearer yet unexpected ways.
Macchi, Christine. “Katharine Cobey: Artist Sculptor Inventor Knitter.” Surface Design 26.3 (Spr. 2002): 38–41. Art Abstracts. Bowling Green State University Libraries. 9 November 2006. <http://www.hwwilson.com>
This is a short profile on textile artist Katharine Cobey, who does extremely conceptual pieces that focus on a variety of concerns. One of the most clearly feminist is a piece called “Danger Dress,” which is meant to either be displayed as a hanging work or worn by a woman. The bodice of this dress is black, strapless, and archetypically feminine and sexual in a twentieth-century fashion. The skirt of the piece, however, is made up of strips of pre-printed “Danger!” tape, forming a billowing cover that both conceals and reveals as it warns both the spectator and wearer of the dangers of femininity and the dangers contained and expressed through the innate sexuality of this dress. Another piece, “Portrait of Alzheimers,” which is dedicated to the artist’s mother, features traditional knitted lace in a shawl. However, as the work continues to its eventual end, cohesion is lost in the knitted fabric, and it turns into shreds of knitted silk that fall to the floor.
One of the most important reasons to include this specific article in this bibliography is the attention paid to Cobey’s freeform approach to her work, and her own astute assessment of the ideological reasons for her working methods. When the interview turns to the subject of patterns, Cobey automatically dismisses them, saying that “The very word…comes from patrone-the patriarchy, the controlled” (38). In that small revelation, she provides an ideology not just behind the finished projects that she displays, but also behind the process and method of the work itself, lending credence to the belief that knitting has the potential to be revolutionary, rhetorically rich, and feminist, even when the act itself is being viewed in separation from its products. In short, she supports my separate studies of process and product as equally meaningful.
Macdonald, Anne L. No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting. New York: Ballantine, 1988.
When there is any discussion among knitters of the history of the craft in America, this is the Bible that is invariably relied upon as the definitive source. Knitter and trained historian Macdonald is equally passionate about both areas of her work; this absolutely shows in the variety and depth of research in this book, which starts with the knitting of the colonial era and moves forward to the time at which it was published.
Although it is my fervent hope that a revised and updated edition that covers the recent knitting boom will be released, I would be sad to see the current edition replaced if for no other reason than one spectacular quote; on its cover, the current paperback prominently features a blurb from The New York Times Book Review to which I frequently refer for mainstream legitimization of my own academic interests: “Fascinating….What is remarkable about this book is that a history of knitting can function so well as a survey of the changes in women’s roles over time.” (Granted, I wouldn’t say that it’s remarkable, but I’m glad that such an august mainstream publication understands the importance of craft in women’s history.) I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Mattingly, Carol. Appropriate[ing] Dress: Women’s Rhetorical Style in Nineteenth-Century America. Carbondale: Southern Illinois U P, 2002.
This work studies the rhetorical usage of clothing by women in the nineteenth century, looking at such issues as cross-dressing, reform dress, and the dress of female speakers. Mattingly makes it clear that dress as a meaning-making tool can be used either for subversion or concession to dominant power structures. Considering that a preoccupation with dress is a trait that has been a traditional part of feminine gender performance, much as craft has, it is fascinating to see the kinds of analytical moves that the author makes in order to situate dress traditions alongside other, more commonly recognized, rhetorical practices. For both method and content, this work is vital.
Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s P, 1984.
Possibly the most important work on this list, this work is both readable and fascinating in the way that it explores both the construction and subversion of femininity through needlework. It is a fascinating, eminently readable, foundational work in this area.
Parker examines embroidery traditions beginning in medieval times, which was the age of male-dominated guilds. From then on, she tracks the changes in the perception of embroidery, which, by the eighteenth century was seen as an exclusively feminine task. From that point forward, needlework functioned as an important way for gender to be initiated, performed, and, occasionally, subverted as one young needlewoman did by creating a sampler that read: “Polly Cook did this and she hated every stitch she did in it” (82). Both the constraints of needlework and the power created by those constraints are discussed here, making this work vital to any understanding of the ways in which those constraints have been used as both motivation and tool for speaking.
Parker, Rozsika and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology. London: Pandora: 1981.
This work interrogates the lack of women to be found within any historical study of the arts, and endeavors to bring a variety of female artists back into the reader’s awareness. The entire text is well worth reading for anyone who is interested in gender and art, but the chapter, “Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts” is probably the most important in terms of this work. In this chapter, the authors consider the craft/art split that has so often been used to remove women’s decorative, pretty works from any sort of serious cultural consideration. They look at the controversy that has surrounded this split at several times, including a push to move women away from a focus on craft that sounds suspiciously like some of the rhetorical maneuvers made by second-wave feminists who wanted women to take male roles and work solely on intellectual pursuits.
Pershing, Linda. “‘She Really Wanted to Be Her Own Woman: Scandalous Sunbonnet Sue.’” Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture. Ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993. 98–125.
Sunbonnet Sue is an image that has been seen in American quilts since the early 1900s: a little girl in a dress and sunbonnet that mask her features and turn her into an almost iconographic statement of feminine stereotypes. Many quilters today still use blocks featuring Sunbonnet Sue. However, as Pershing reveals in this piece, some have rebelled against the anonymous girlishness of Sunbonnet Sue and created new quilts that mock, reclaim, and subvert Sunbonnet Sue.
The first such piece discussed by Pershing is “Scandalous Sue,” a quilt created as a collective effort by the women of a Texas quilt guild. This piece takes the traditional Sue image and puts it into new situations: bra-burning, drinking champagne, and smoking. There are also other blocks that go further with the reworking of Sue, such as “Sue Skinny-Dipping” which shows Sue’s dress and bonnet hanging from a tree, and a barely visible bit of flesh-toned fabric exposed in a pond, shaped in a curve evocative of a mostly submerged buttock. Another block shows Sue’s iconic outfit remade as a wedding dress; however, this wedding dress is draped across an extremely pregnant form.
In the second piece, “The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue,” Sue is killed off in a variety of ways, including lightning strike, hanging, and a giant snake. Part of the purpose of this quilt was to “strike a blow against the cute,” (114) as one of the quilters involved told Pershing. Many quilters feel great irritation with this overwhelmingly wholesome character and the faceless feminine that she represents.
In both cases, “the cute” is subverted and acted against through rhetorically sophisticated, calculated reclamation; although most of the quilters involved in both projects did not have deliberately feminist intentions in the pieces, according to Pershing, the action taking place here is certainly relevant to discussions of feminism.
Radner, Joan Newlon and Susan S. Lanser. “Strategies of Coding in Women’s Culture.” Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture. Ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993. 1–29.
The introduction to the fantastic collection Feminist Messages, this piece covers the need for and practice of coding in women’s culture. The point is made here that open resistance and rebellion may not necessarily be safe for women in tightly controlled patriarchal homes, areas, or countries. However, messages that are coded in such a way that they will only be understood by the intended recipients—frequently, other women—are safe ways for actions against oppression to begin. This piece also makes the point that folk culture, with its mixture of verbal and visual resources, is an excellent place for this to occur. Many activists and scholars fail to see the value of subversion or reclamation if it is not completely open and obvious; this piece clarifies the reasons for and methods of such action.
Spencer, Amy. The Crafter Culture Handbook. London: Marion Boyars, 2007.
This is not an academic work; instead, it is a recent release that examines indie, Do-It-Yourself (DIY) crafter culture, much of which is openly and avowedly feminist. More than fifty crafters, most of whom are successful small businesspersons, are discussed in this book. Each of them have a brief biographical sketch, an extended quote discussing their relationship to/views on craft, and a project in their chosen medium. These projects range from the simple and traditional (a sewn pin in the shape of a flower) to those informed by activism (a crocheted bag made of plastic grocery bags) to the technological and offbeat (a vintage video game controller that has been turned into an optical mouse).
Ideologically, this work is most tied to the anti-sweatshop portion of the DIY movement. However, there are definite feminist elements at play, more from some crafters than others. This work is of the most value to this project because of the overview it presents of the current craft world…non-traditional, reclamatory, and ideologically aware.
Stoller, Debbie. Stitch ‘n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook. New York: Workman, 2003.
This is another non-academic, but essential, work…largely due to the ethos of Debbie Stoller. Stoller is a cofounder of third-wave feminist magazine BUST, which has played a major role in the feminist legitimizing of craft in the third wave. While knitting was already growing in popularity among younger women at the time that this book came out, this work helped cement the acceptance of the craft among indie-minded, DIY-influenced feminists.
This book primarily focuses on patterns, which come from knitters from across the globe. This is somewhat non-traditional, breaking away from the “artisan” model of the author as a solidly authoritarian driving force behind a project to embrace a somewhat more collectivist, feminist model with Stoller at its center. This approach has become extremely popular within the craft since this book’s release.
Also notable within this work is Stoller’s introduction, in which she describes her struggle as a feminist interested in traditional craft. She elegantly phrases her eventual realization that knitting could be deeply feminist:
[A]ll those people who looked down on knitting—and housework, and housewives—were not being feminist at all. In fact, they were being anti-feminist, since they seemed to think that only those things that men did, or had done, were worthwhile. Sure, feminism had changed the world, and young girls all across the country had formed soccer leagues, and were growing up to become doctors and astronauts and senators. But why weren’t boys learning to knit and sew? Why couldn’t we all—women and men alike—take the same kind of pride in the work our mothers had always done as we did in the work of our fathers? (7)
The sheer fact that third-wave icon Stoller could have this kind of realization made it acceptable to women who might not have picked up (or subverted) the craft without her influence.
